to see all my pictures, go here
Also, I updated my last post with some more pictures of the shark cage diving.
Last Monday was Mike’s last night in Cape Town (except it actually wasn’t, because he missed his flight the next day, but we didn’t know that was going to happen at the time) we went out for some farewell drinks. After randomly tripping and falling outside of Dubliners, leading a bunch of people to stare and point at me as if I were the drunkest person they’d ever seen (I was stone cold sober), I met up with Jim, Hirsh and Mike at this place called “Julep,” which had really delicious cocktails. After that we went back to Dubliners and hung out and listened to this sort of one-man cover band, who kept interrupting his signing to ask someone to bring him drinks. Hmm. That got a little old after a while so we headed to this place Zulu Sound Bar, which I’ve been wanting to check out for a while, which was pretty ‘hip’ if you will but as I wasn’t trying to be exhausted for work the next day I left the boys and caught a taxi home around midnight.
I spent a good part of the week translating documents/contracts/emails from English into French for Mukelani, one of my supervisors. I definitely didn’t mind doing a lot of translation work when it was from French→ English and was part of my research for the memo I was writing on access to information policies in the Congo, but I was a little annoyed at having to do straight French→English translation work (and we’re actually not supposed to have to do straight translation work for our internships this summer). I finally finished up with that project and am kind of hoping I don’t have to do any more straight translation during my last week and a half at ODAC.
One of the most mind-boggling things about working at an NGO in South Africa is that when the internet stops working (which happens A LOT), instead of getting on the phone immediately to try to get someone out to fix the problem, the majority of the people here at ODAC just sort of throw up their hands and say ‘oh well, guess we can’t do any work until it starts working again.’ This is what happened on Friday at around 1:00 pm, so Jim and I got to leave work 4 hours earlier than normal. We took that opportunity to check out the National Gallery, which is very close to our office.
What an interesting experience. I think the most striking/bizarre feature of the exhibits was the video art. One of those pieces was just a video of a guy in a business suit dancing on top of a building wearing a kind of newspaper headdress. Another featured a white drag queen wearing only a chandelier and high heels, running around a township dancing and twirling like a ballerina while being pointed at and stared at by the people of the township (this exhibit actually had its own private little viewing room). Yet another intriguing piece of video art was just a shot of a line of people’s feet climbing into a vehicle with this really strange (and distracting) music playing—the title of this one was “Where do I begin?”. Honestly sometimes the value of modern art just really escapes me, but I guess I would rather art be weird than boring.
View looking out from the National Gallery into the Gardens:
More of the Gardens:
Later that evening David, Jim and I got a couple of pizzas and went to see “A Serious Man,” a Cohen brothers film, at Labia Theatres across the street. It was a really weird and frustrating movie that left about a bajillion plot lines unresolved at the end. Grrr.
I also just finished reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, recommended by my Mom, which is an AMAZING book about African American maids working for white families in Mississippi in the 1960's. Read it. I've been reading a ton this summer, and the best books I've read so far have been Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, Disgrace by J.R. Coetzee, and the non-African themed Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran-Foer (an AMAZING novel).
Sunday morning Jim, Hirsh, David and I woke up early, went to the train station, and took the train out to Stellenbosch, which is an area in “wine country” about an hour from Cape Town. The town itself, where Stellenbosch university is, is really beautiful (and wealthy).
Street in Stellenbosch:
I had set up an all-day winery tour for us through a hostel called 'Stumble Inn Stellenbosch' Backpackers (very clever), and so we went to that hostel to meet up with the tour. There were about 15 of us overall, and after meeting our very eccentric tour guide we all got in the vans and headed to the first winery, Simonsig.
We got a tour of the winery and I learned that one barrel for making wine costs about 9,000 Rand (about $1200) and can only be used three times. Each barrel contains about 300 bottles of wine.
Then we all sat at outdoor tables and got to sample a bunch of their wines. We started with “Cape Sparkle,” sparkling wine made in the Champagne style, which I think sounds like a name that would have belonged to a My Little Pony (not that I ever owned about 45 of those). Our tour guide, whose name I guess is “Titi Titi,” made a point of dramatically opening the bottle of Cape Sparkle with a sword.
After the first winery we hopped back in the vans and went to the second winery, Fairview. As soon as we got out of the vans our tour guide plucked this really cool chameleon off of a plant and showed him to us—one of his sides was darker than the other so he can look more leaf-like when he needs to.
This was my favorite winery because you got to go around to different sort of bars and sample whatever wines you wanted, and there was also a huge cheese tasting counter. I tried a port-like dessert wine and the lady told me I had to try it along with their full-fat blue cheese--turned out to be a DELICIOUS combination. This winery also had a bunch of goats in the front that were climbing up a set of stairs that wound around a little tower in their pen. I’m guessing those goats were responsible for the wide array of goat cheeses available at the cheese sampling bar.
After that winery, we headed to Franschhoek where we had lunch. Many people in the group were ambitiously drinking wine with lunch- I had slowed down about an hour earlier and had been giving half of every wine tasting to Jim, who was only too happy to assist me. We then went to a third winery (I think it was called Dieu Donné, meaning God-given) near Franschhoek, which was by far the most beautiful winery probably because of how it was located right near these two mountain ranges that form a corner. We were mainly hanging out with these two British students that we met and a Canadian girl who actually wasn’t very friendly, despite the fact that she was traveling alone.
By the fourth winery, Boschendal, most of the group was pretty tanked. I suppose all-day wine tasting can do that to you.
See the face of our tour guide:
After leaving Boscendal, we headed back to Stellenbosch, and then had another beer at a really authentic-feeling pub in town with the two British guys.
Stellenbosch in the early evening:
When we went back to Stumble Inn to drop off the two British guys, we discovered the unfriendly Canadian girl in a very compromising position with Titi Titi (note to female traveling alone: NOT the best plan).
When we finally caught the last train back to Cape Town, we somehow picked the car that was basically being hot-boxed by about 15 Rasta guys who had ridiculous dreadlocks and were smoking A LOT of pot. Hirsh of course immediately makes friends with them and gets into deep conversation with a few of them. It was a very long ride back to Cape Town. At this point I could feel I had a migraine coming on from all the sun and the wine (even though I stopped doing anything more than sipping the wines I thought I would like, meaning no white wine, at about noon) and I knew I wasn’t going to make it out that night. The boys wanted to go to Knoxville (the bar right next door to our hotel) but I knew I was going to fall asleep pretty much as soon as I got home. I was right.
Yesterday I spent a pretty sad day at the hotel nursing my migraine, but today it appears to be better. Tonight is going to be a full moon and we are planning on hiking Lion’s Head mountain, the one right next to Table Mountain, hanging out up there for a little bit to meet up with some other US friends and watch the moon, and then hike back down by the moonlight and get dinner in Cape Town.
Can’t believe in 9 days I’ll be heading back to the States!
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